ravkanwitch | [closed post: a task]

[closed post: a task]

Nina has been feeling more like herself recently. It's taken a few weeks of self care, a failed waffle experiment, many naps with Khitka, a history lesson from Kade, quality time with friends, and a few mildly distressing conversations with alternate versions of people that she knows – but she's okay. She'll be much better once Shen Yuan is back of course, but for now, she'll do what she does best and weather the storm.

There are few things she's considering in her mind but right now, she's flipping through some language books with Khitka curled around the back of her neck, dozing.

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Nina, unfortunately, is quite easily distracted and enthralled -- especially by shiny things, and she has found a set of throwing stars. The edges are quite sharp and she's pricked herself already, but she's holding one of them up curiously. "What are these?"

Lan Wangji turns from the cabinet to see what Nina is holding. Interested, he takes one from her, then glances down with a minuscule frown at where she's injured herself. "Are you hurt?"

"No, I'm fine," she reassures him. There's just a small dot of blood on the wound and after he takes the star, she digs around in her pockets for a handkerchief to blot it up.

His immediate impulse is to help, but it truly is a small injury and he is wary of pushing too hard at her boundaries so soon. He examines the weapon she has handed him instead, turning it -- carefully -- in his hand. "I have not seen this before."

She holds the handkerchief tight against the cut, not worried in the slightest herself. It doesn't seem to be bleeding heavily at all. "I wonder if you throw it ...or perhaps it's a projectile, thrown by something else."

"Find a sword," Lan Wangji suggests, "but once you do, we can take this with us as well and test it outdoors."

That's right. A sword. Nina nods and tears herself away from the drawer, heading to another cabinet instead. When she opens it, she finds a row of swords with their hilts inlaid with pearls and ivory. Pretty. And closer.

The swords are beautiful indeed, so beautiful that Lan Wangji steps closer behind Nina to examine them. He's uninterested in replacing Bichen in any sense, but not so uninterested that he doesn't reach out to, with care, touch one of the most intricate hilts on display, imagining its heft in his hand.

"These are gorgeous," Nina says, feeling as though she should lower her voice. "But... not quite what I was looking for. They're too delicate for me."

With his hand still at the hilt of that sword, a luminous pearl pressing at the pad of his thumb, Lan Wangji looks at Nina. There may be an unbridgeable gap separating them. He can't say whether they will ever find a way to cross it regardless. He admires her forthrightness, though, the cheer with which she sees her strengths and her flaws at once, and her kindness. He nods; she deserves a beautiful weapon, but one that announces its intent more bluntly. "Keep looking."

Nina excels at reading people. It's what she was sent away from Ravka to do, in Fjerda -- and Fjerdans aren't known for showing their emotions easily. Still, it's difficult to read Lan Wangji at times, and she's trying very hard to not take it personally.

"Please," she says cheerfully, quite politely, holding onto the handle of the door to another cabinet, "a sword with a bone handle."

When she opens it, there's a sword inside where both the hilt and scabbard appear to be made out of bone. Both are carved intricately with dark lines of sun, clouds, water, wind; everything that the Grisha have an affinity with, all carved into bone. The effect is both delicate and beautiful -- but also quite morbid. Nina stares at it for a moment.

Nina's silence is just as loud as if she had made some upbeat comment about her finding -- louder, even, perhaps. Lan Wangji shuts that other cabinet behind himself and comes closer. Nina isn't looking, but if she were to, she would see his eyes widen by a fraction. The scabbard is beautiful in the way that a skeletal hand breaking through soil and reaching for freedom is beautiful.

He says nothing; his input feels unnecessary.

She lifts one hand up and the scabbard comes off of its hooks and flying towards her; she's too cautious and maybe a little frightened to do the same with the sword. It is bone, though she's unsure what type of bone. Maybe it's best that she doesn't know.

She sets the scabbard aside on a table and gently lifts the sword out of the cabinet. "Saints," she says quietly, half to herself. "What a beautiful sword."

It is lovely. Lan Wangji folds his hands behind his back and examines the look of it, the white-yellow gleam and the shocking sharpness of its edges. "How does it feel? Test the weight."

Nina holds the sword with both hands on the hilt, awkward and tentative at first, then shifts her grip so it's more comfortable. She is a trained fighter by nature but she's never actually fought with something in her hands and that alone feels different.

The good thing, though, is that her upper arm strength isn't shabby. "It feels good," she tells him. "Not too heavy."

"Good." He takes a few slow steps around her, examining the way she holds herself and looking for any strain in her arms or shoulders. "And when you swing it?"

Nina swings it, tentative. The strength and grace is there but the angle is all wrong -- and she knows it. She's still pleased with how it cuts through the air. "I've only learned fencing with Laertes," she tells him, in explanation of her swordsmanship.

Lan Wangji had no intention of commenting on her form just yet. That can come later. He cares more about how the sword suits her. "You will have more than enough teachers if you want them. How did that feel?"

"It felt good," she tells him. "It helps that the hilt is made of bone. I can sense it."

"Good," Lan Wangji says again. "It is the same for a cultivator with a spiritual weapon."

Nina doesn't want to ask too much - but she desperately wants to ask this. She looks at Lan Wangji. "Do you think… there are some special moves that you could teach me? Moves that a cultivator might use. After I ask Sagramore for basic training, of course."

And, again, he nods. "It may not be precisely the same. But we can experiment." Without its own spirit, the bone sword won't be perfectly analogous to a cultivator's weapon. It seems to answer to her, though, enough that he has some ideas already.

"Thank you," Nina says, looking down at her sword. It's a multiple-purpose thank you. Thanks for hearing her out, for helping her find the sword, for the promise of teaching her.

After a flicker of a pause, Lan Wangji says, "You're welcome." He still has the throwing star. He holds it aloft and gives her a mildly questioning look: shall they adjourn upstairs and outside to see what this does?

Nina nods. "Be careful," she tells Lan Wangji breezily, with a small smile, "that's sharp. You might be an idiot and prick yourself with it."

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lightbearinglord - 2024-08-11 22:59 (UTC) - Expand

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